


god's nut punching quota

by alcego



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Accidental Meeting in a Coffee Shop, Dentist AU, Eventual Smut, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Modern AU, No Sex In Dentist's Offices Though Because That's Not Sexy, Pining Lotor, smut with feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 03:28:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14440473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alcego/pseuds/alcego
Summary: ”Evening,” Dr. Shirogane said, trading his jovial good nature for casual professionalism as he stepped through the door. “Sarene tells me you’re here for an emergency tooth repair…?””It does look that way,” Lotor agreed, preparing to outline his oral predicament with a businesslike efficiency to match that of the good doctor’s. He opened his eyes——and forgot what he’d been about to say.Oral predicamentindeed.





	god's nut punching quota

**Author's Note:**

> the nuance of tagging continues to be a wily beast intent on eluding my grasp, but i did my best
> 
> for reference, the smut takes place in chapter two, and absolutely _nothing_ even moderately sexy occurs in the dentist's office

It was the kind of day where God gave you another set of nuts for the express purpose of punching them. The kind of day where you just want to go home and sleep for ten years. The kind of fucking day you don’t want to end at the dentist’s office.

Look, Lotor was a civilized man. He had a job and a house and a car — the whole nine yards when it came down to living an even moderately successful life. And Lotor was a lot more than _moderately successful_. Oh no, he’d left _moderately_ behind years ago.

Not that anyone cared.

In Lotor’s experience, there wasn’t much of an upside to being the son of capitalism’s most infamous businessman. But he seemed to be the only one who thought so. Media and coworkers alike saw Lotor as nothing more than a trust-fund baby who had finally fulfilled his destiny. Of course, they were missing the whole picture.

Despite his father’s lucrative dealings, Lotor had grown up with nothing. Not in the material sense — no, he’d had food on the table and a roof over his head, not to mention a number to call when he landed himself in trouble. But food and lodging meant nothing to a child when their youth was spent broiling within a spartan room isolated from their peers, with only hatred and shame for company.

 _Just what I should have expected,_ his father had said once, sneering at Lotor’s crumpled form, _from halfbreed filth like you._

From the beginning, Lotor had been sickly and weak, and his father couldn’t stand the sight of him. Couldn’t fathom that this frail child’s birth had destroyed his mother’s mind and crippled her body. Possessed by irrational and deluded wrath, Zarkon had sought a way to prevent Lotor from ever seeing a penny of his fortune.

His father had appointed Sendak, his most trusted and vile man, as the successor of his company. The proceedings had been handled with discretion, and any media attention it might have received was quickly smothered. So far as the public knew, Lotor was rich and powerful and a force to be reckoned with. In reality, Lotor was simply a force to be reckoned with.

Which brought him back to the _point_ , which was that God had decided it was a day to grant nuts and punch them.

It began when his car blew a tire, which had meant an untimely arrival at the firm and an utterly ruined pair of slacks — after all, his cleaner couldn't do much for the tiny, gritty holes the road had left in the knees of his pants. New pants were in order, and the slacks were destined for a donation box.

That, however, had not filled God’s nut-punching quota.

After his tire had blown, Lotor’s day had been plagued by inconvenience. Minor ones, for the most part, but they added up. The bathroom had been out of paper towels; then his computer had been rendered inoperable by a blown fuse; his coffee had been frigid, then scalding when he made another pot; the head of his firm had walked into the bathroom as Lotor was scrubbing a definite coffee stain from his shirt in the sink. Little things, see.

And then there was the big thing. The sort of thing that happened at the end of a bad day only destined to get worse. The kind of situation you wish upon strangers who’ve nearly run you off the road during your morning commute. The sort of fucking thing that forces you to end your day at the dentist.

Lotor’s tooth had cracked.

———

Rubbing some warmth back into his arms, Lotor took in the office before him. The lobby was small, as was the case with many dentist’s offices, but it was not without character. Warm wooden floorboards brought life into the room, complemented by the soft green paint on the walls. A tasteful array of vases and aesthetic knickknacks lined the top of a black, wooden bookshelf situated in the room’s farthest corner, just beyond the equally black, plush chairs lining the wall. Hopefully, the person responsible for the office’s interior design had been compensated well for their effort; they had done a remarkable job balancing the room's professional yet homey ambiance.

Directly before him was the receptionist’s desk. It had an open counter, behind which a tall, lanky woman turned the curling pages of an aged magazine, her face obscured by the computer monitor.

Feeling considerably warmer than he'd been a moment earlier, Lotor relaxed his arms and stepped up to the reception desk. The tall woman didn’t look up from her magazine. Lotor cleared his throat.

”You,” the receptionist said, setting down her magazine, “don’t belong here.”

 _Interesting greeting._ “And why is that?”

”You’re rich.” The receptionist — Sarene, as the helpful plaque on her desk told him — smiled pleasantly, as if this was how she greeted every patient who walked through the door.

Lotor frowned.

”Oh, I can read you like a book,” she said, smile turning sly. “You’re old money. I’d bet you’ve had that suit for years, and that the holes in the knee are new. Some might take that as a sign that you’ve fallen upon hard times, hence your visit to our humble office, but it seems far more likely that you’ve offered us your patronage simply because our office is cheap, efficient, and located close to your office.”

”And did you get this strictly from my appearance, or did the magazine sporting my face on its cover play a part in your concise evaluation of my person?”

”A bit of both,” Sarene admitted. “Are you here for an appointment? Because we don’t do walk-ins.”

”I called ahea—”

” _You_ called?” Sarene turned on her monitor. “Not one of your lackeys?”

Lotor sighed. “I am perfectly capable of constructing my own appointments, thank you.”

Sarene nodded, only halfway paying attention to him now. “Yes. Yes, I believe you must be, since you’ve managed to get here on time.” She smiled, and Lotor was struck by how the slightest tilt of the eyes could transform such a look from predatory to pleasant.

”Shall I wait, then?” Lotor asked, storing the expression away for later examination.

Sarene turned off the monitor and shook her head. “No need. If you’ll just follow me to the back, I’ll get you all set up.”

And they were back to business. Lotor followed Sarene as she led him to an exam room styled with the same wooden floors, green walls, and tastefully black furniture found in the lobby.

Moving with orderly grace, Sarene gestured for Lotor to take a seat. As she waited for him to settle into the reclining chair (which, he noted uncomfortably, placed his back to the door in favor of a small window in the wall) Sarene typed a few terse commands into the monitor just outside of the room. Once Lotor was seated, Sarene clipped a dentist's bib around his neck and offered him a genuine smile.

"I'll go let Dr. Shirogane know you're ready for him."

Then she left the room, and Lotor was left to wait.

———

He didn’t wait for long. Laughter echoed from down the hall, and though it was muted by the room’s closed door, there was a certain… richness to it. Lotor closed his eyes, trying to imagine the man behind the laugh.

Would he be one of those men whose voice overshadowed their diminutive physique, or would his body live up to the full baritone of his voice? More importantly, did he deserve the natural charm and confidence projected from such a laugh? Lotor had found nothing but glowing reviews of Dr. Shirogane online, and that troubled him. No one was so charming that even the surliest of customers would refrain from leaving a scathing Yelp review.

Dr. Shirogane knocked on the door. It seemed that Lotor would soon find his questions answered.

”Evening,” Dr. Shirogane said, trading his jovial good nature for casual professionalism as he stepped through the door. “Sarene tells me you’re here for an emergency tooth repair…?”

”It does look that way,” Lotor agreed, preparing to outline his oral predicament with a businesslike efficiency to match that of the good doctor’s. He opened his eyes—

—and forgot what he’d been about to say. _Oral predicament_ indeed.

Dr. Shirogane was, not to put too fine a point on things, unfairly fucking hot. Though he wore a long-sleeved shirt under his scrubs, there was no hiding the muscles that bulged from his arms, and his neck, and his chest. Nor was there any ignoring the tanned skin of his face, or the scar jutting across his nose, or the flop of white hair hanging over his forehead in startling contrast to the black of his neatly groomed undercut.

Dr. Shirogane looked up from his clipboard and trapped Lotor in his iron gaze.

Lotor cleared his throat. “I’ve found myself with a broken tooth,” he said, sounding far more confident than he felt.

"Well then—” Dr. Shirogane smiled “—let’s take a look at it.”

———

Despite Lotor’s misgivings, the appointment went well. Dr. Shirogane had taken one quick look at his cracked tooth, called in Sarene, and begun an emergency repair. None of his equipment had gone rogue, nor had he clipped the root of Lotor’s tooth, or even his gums. In fact, it appeared that Dr. Shirogane’s reviews had been nothing less than accurate; the man was gifted with his hands.

Still, Lotor was human, and he allowed himself to hope for something — _anything_ — to suggest Dr. Shirogane was interested. But it was a day for granting nuts and punching them, and Lotor left the dentist's office with a finely repaired tooth, instructions to avoid eating or drinking for a few hours, and absolutely no number or future appointments to look forward to.

Really, he should have seen it coming.

———

A week later saw Lotor thin and fraying around the edges. There had been a complication in his current client's defense, and Lotor had been pulling ungodly hours in a last-ditch effort to ensure his client would see the outside of a prison cell sometime before their death.

Briefcase thumping against his thigh, Lotor eyed the coffee shop sitting across the street from his building. A gust of freezing air sent shivers up his spine, and his decision was made.

Mindful of careless morning drivers, Lotor crossed the street. He needed eight hours of sleep or a solid punch to the face to wake him up, but he’d settle for an unhealthy amount of coffee to jostle his mind into something resembling clarity. Lotor stepped through the shop’s clear glass door.

A bleary-eyed employee took Lotor’s order, too familiar with the distant thoughts of sleep-deprived lawyers to bother with small talk. Lotor paid for his coffee and moved to the end of the chic counter, waiting for his angry bean juice. But before Lotor’s thoughts could dawdle off towards the knotted truth of his client’s case, the shop’s door opened. Shivering against the fresh onslaught of frigid air, Lotor glanced up. And froze.

Dr. Shirogane had just entered the building.

Lotor stared, somehow unable to fathom that a man like Dr. Shirogane would drink coffee in the morning — let alone purchase it at the shop just across from Lotor’s workplace. His shock was slow to fade; it took the barista calling Lotor’s order for his attention to shift away from Dr. Shirogane.

But the barista’s call was a double-edged sword, drawing Dr. Shirogane's attention to him. Lotor could feel Dr. Shirogane’s eyes on his back as he took the hot paper cup in his hands. Willing himself to act casual, Lotor moved to a small table by the wall and sat down, pointedly avoiding Dr. Shirogane’s gaze.

Heart racing, Lotor chided himself. What was he doing? This wasn’t some high school drama — he was a grown man, fully capable of making eye contact with another adult. Yes, Dr. Shirogane was attractive, and unfairly so, but that didn’t mean Lotor could throw the rules of engagement to the floor.

So he looked up. Dr. Shirogane waited at the end of the counter, where Lotor had stood a minute prior. And he was watching Lotor, lips playing with a knowing smile.

Feigning confidence, Lotor held Dr. Shirogane's gaze — and was rewarded for it, for Dr. Shirogane's face flushed red, and he shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. It was strange that a man with Dr. Shirogane’s presence could seem _bashful_ , but the gesture humanized him.

Suddenly, Lotor’s heart didn’t beat so fast. He could forget about work for a while and enjoy the time he spent in Dr. Shirogane’s presence. A brief exchange of lingering looks meant nothing and could do no harm. Except it wasn't just a look anymore; coffee in hand, Dr. Shirogane made his way to Lotor’s table.

“Could I, uh…” Dr. Shirogane trailed off, unoccupied hand rubbing the back of his neck.

“Feel free to join me,” Lotor said, enthralled by the man's self-consciousness. “Dr. Shirogane, is it?”

Lines crinkled around Dr. Shirogane’s eyes as he smiled and pulled off his jacket, draping it over the back of his chair. “Just Shiro’s fine.”

“Shiro.” Lotor turned the name over on his tongue, playing with the feel of it. “That’s a nice name.”

“Thanks.” Shiro’s smile turned cheeky. “I’ve had it all my life.”

Lotor laughed. “I’ve found that is often the case when names are involved.”

Still smiling, Shiro put his cup to his lips and drank. Their conversation petered out, but in a comfortable way. It was the quiet of intermission, as both parties collected their wits and assessed their situation. Or so Lotor assumed; it was difficult to imagine someone entering a conversation unarmed.

Finally, Shiro nodded to Lotor’s briefcase. “That for work?”

Lotor sighed. So much for forgetting about the case. “Lawyer.” Anticipating the upcoming question, he added: “Criminal defense.”

Shiro frowned and sipped his coffee, forehead pinching slightly. Lotor bit back another sigh; he knew that look, and it did nothing to improve his quickly souring mood. Defense attorneys were looked down upon as the carrion birds of the legal system, and it was not uncommon for laymen to believe that a defense attorney — if paid enough — would protect humanity’s worst without a second thought.

This was, of course, an oversimplified version of how the system functioned. True, there were defense attorneys who would take up any case when offered the appropriate funds, but that ignored the few who worked expensive, high profile cases so that they might take up another client’s case without compensation. In the end, a court's defense was built on all manners of people, not all of whom operated with justice in mind.

The same could be said for prosecutors, of course. And that was where Lotor stepped in.

Lotor was a barrier between the prosecution and his client, working to ensure they received a fair trial, and that their sentence fit their crime. Because of this, Lotor cared little for the moral dignity of his clients; they were usually guilty of at least one of the charges brought against them.

”I, uh,” Shiro said, “have a friend who might appreciate your services.”

Lotor closed his eyes. _Of course you do._ “Let me guess,” he said dryly. “They’re innocent?”

Shiro laughed. “No! No, he definitely punched the guy. Messed his eyes up pretty badly too, from the sound of things.”

Lotor smiled. True, he would defend the scum of the earth, but he could not defend someone intent on lying to him. “I can work with that.”

Shiro smiled a small, lopsided smile. Heart squeezing, Lotor looked away. It should have been illegal for a man as hot as Shiro to be so… _cute_.

Luckily, Lotor had practice schooling his emotions. “Here,” he said, reaching into his briefcase. “Let me give you my card, and you can pass it on to your friend.”

A pause. Hesitation? “Sounds like a good idea.”

Lotor fingered his card. Pursuing a romantic relationship with someone close to his client — no matter how distant or familial their ties might be — was profoundly unprofessional. It was a scandal in the making. His heart sighed.

Then slammed into his throat, for there was an idea fresh in his mind. Leaving his card where it was, Lotor leaned back in his chair. “My caseload is rather… full, at the moment,” he said, each word calculated against Shiro’s expression. “But I can refer your friend’s case to my partner, who specializes in legal disputes of the sort he’s found himself in.”

The skin around Shiro’s eyes crinkled, and he smiled a second later. “In that case,” Shiro said, “I’ll just leave my number with you.” He spoke slowly, knowingly, another message entirely hidden within his tone.

Meeting no resistance from Lotor, Shiro pulled a pen from his scrubs’ pocket and scribbled a string of numbers across his napkin. Their eyes met, and Lotor was trapped in Shiro’s iron gaze.

Shiro’s watch beeped, and the illusion of intimacy shattered.

Cursing under his breath, Shiro leaped from his chair and grabbed his jacket. He patted his pockets, half-frantic, as if confirming his wallet and keys hadn’t wandered off from where he’d last deposited them.

He turned towards the door — and hesitated. Turning to look at Lotor, Shiro shoved his hands in his pockets and said, “Call me.”

Then Shiro darted through the shop’s door, and he was gone.

Alone with his thoughts once more, Lotor picked up the napkin with Shiro’s number on it. Smiling, Lotor slipped it into his briefcase and sipped his coffee, thoughts drifting to vague possibilities and naive fantasies.

It seemed talking to Shiro had done the trick, for work was the farthest thing from his mind.

**Author's Note:**

> you know that feel when you're tired as all hell but also have the cruel flame of approaching deadlines up your ass? that's me right now. i've been shrieking internally for so long that it doesn't even register. uhhhhhhhhhh my brain is gone but i deffo appreciate any feedback you've got for me if you'd like to pop into the comments or hmu at my [tumblr](https://alcego.tumblr.com)
> 
> planning to have chapter two up within a week or two, if all goes well  
> EDIT (May 10): due to irl circumstances as well as shitty time management on my end part 2 will be up likely after the end of May -- ALSO BIG THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO LEFT KUDOS and/or COMMENTS!!! i havent had a chance to respond to them yet but every time i think abt the kind words everyone has sent me i get v v happy & excited to work on part 2!! thank you so much guys ♥️♥️
> 
> i'm gonna be real busy soon with all sorts of irl & fandom shit so plz just know that i see what you say and am crying bc i love you all okay i'm gonna uh post this and go to sleep bc i have work later and should probably sleep before doing that wow this turned into a rambling mess coolcoolcool


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